Podcast 551

Escapism. Given the sour nature of our political discourse these days what do you do to escape. A morning ritual turns into a content generator for the Bob Davis Podcasts in Podcast 551 Escapism. Lately I have been bingewatching TV shows on Netflix and iTunes, with the HBO series “Shameless’ and especially this weekend to watching the entire first series of the Netflix show “Stranger Things”. Stranger Things does such a great job creating an alternate reality, you just can’t get enough. Usually when people recommend TV shows I’m like, “Yeah whatever”. Stranger Things is the exception. What a great show. Getting back to the morning ritual; Every morning I get up, make coffee and head over to the park. I sit on a hill, drink my coffee and am alone with my thoughts. No phone. No social media. No talking to myself at least for that first few minutes of awake time. It’s been great for listening to the thoughts bubbling up from the subconscious and figuring out how to do podcasts about them. This weekend’s binge viewing of Stranger Things made me think about Escapism and how important it has apparently become considering the election year we’re having and coverage of it. When I first talked about the News Cleanse about three years ago on these podcasts, I had no idea it would end up having the power it has to generate new and different things to talk about in the podcasts. I know that, given the current discourse, I don’t want to be a contributing factor to what amounts to misinformation on breaking news stories like the attack at the Mall in Saint Cloud this weekend or the daily and predictable back and forth between presidential candidates trying to capitalize on these kinds of events. Aside from the stuff that actually moves the needle; shifts in the polls, candidates collapsing in public, huge breaking stories like a financial collapse or some major shift in policy from the current administration, it’s ok to check and once in awhile on political news, but I just can’t muster the intellectual interest in the day to day nonsense that seems to animate everyone on the radio, television and on the Internet. What do you do to escape? Movies, Trips to the Wilderness? Binge Watching shows. Drugs and alcohol? How much escape is too much escape. What is healthy escape? How many want to escape, and what happens after the new president is inaugurated in January 2017. Sponsored by Hydrus Performance.

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Podcast 520-Bob Davis Podcasts Radio Show-33

Podcast 520-Bob Davis Podcasts Radio Show-33. Heading into the the US Independence Day Holiday. The British Exit Vote Fallout and the potential for a Black Swan event are covered extensively in Podcast 520-Bob Davis Podcasts Radio Show-33 with new original content and excerpts from this week’s podcasts. Oddly enough the ‘mother country’, Great Britain, declared her own independence with the vote to exit the Euro Zone just over a week ago. In an echo of British reaction to the colonies’ declaration of independence in 1776, the unelected suzerains of the European Union were first shocked, then angry. Media reaction to the British vote shifted from hysterical to hostile. Let’s not forget that coverage of the vote did not detail the contours of the issue. There was very little reporting, before the vote, on which trade agreements the UK has with the EU might be effected, the fact that the vote is not binding, or how the UK might invoke the Lisbon Treaty in preparation for an exit. On the business side of the equation, all Americans heard was that the markets were crashing and it would be the end of the world, financially speaking. Slightly more than a week later, markets are recovering as buying opportunities abound. Here’s another example of a situation where the media fails to cover an event, other than to ‘predict’ the outcome of a vote, and then loses its head once an outcome it did not predict, occurs. In this review of the week’s podcast and the week’s news, two segments are devoted to reaction to the British Vote and what it might mean. Some Americans might be surprised to learn that the implications of the British vote aren’t limited just to the UK, but also include countries and people everywhere that feel the heavy weight of government on their backs. A ‘government’ always there to cure all that ails us, never has to explain its incompetence. Maybe this is what voters in Britain might be saying. With all the shouting and screaming and pounding, the telling you want to think, how to act and what you ‘should’ and ‘should not’ do, it might be a good time to take stock and spend some time with your family. How many people have this feeling that another shoe is about to drop. What is the possibility of a Black Swan Event? An historic event with the power to influence politics and society far into the future? Despite all the conspiracy theories about the people in charge maybe the truth is, they really don’t have a clue what they’re doing which is actually pretty frightening? So enjoy your burgers and beer, pretzels and family. If we are on the verge of a major event, we’ll look back on the summer of 2016 as that moment in time before everything changed.

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Podcast 450

Beware The Soothsayers. So much of our media these days is caught up in predicting the future. Weather, economics, sports and especially politics, isn’t so much about fact as it is about predictions based on opinion and poorly supported ‘fatcs’. Without a real basis in science or proven facts, we’re constantly told what the ‘future will bring’. It’s a wonder news anchors and ‘commentators’ don’t wear brightly colored head dresses and look into a crystal ball. One of the reasons we are ill served by a modern media possessed of the greatest technology for informing known to man, is its executives exhort their on screen ‘actors’ and so called ‘journalists’ to use opinion and hearsay to ‘predict’ what ‘will’ happen, rather than just report the facts around an event, or ‘the news’. For instance, lower prices for gasoline was going to ‘act like a tax cut’ and we would have economic growth. The Christmas retail shopping season might be a little down, but it would still be good. Donald Trump would be a flash in the pan, and would ‘collapse’ as soon as voters ‘came to their senses’. This is the time of year astrologers make their predictions for 2016, which are about as accurate as the wild ‘predictions’ made by the cable news services, round table discussions, commentary pieces distributed on line, and most of the rest of the media conglomeration complex, especially talk radio and the cable news channels. What do you think would happen if they stopped making predictions? There’d be a lot of dead air. In fact most of what is being broadcast and written these days is little more than fortune telling, and not very good fortune telling at that. In a late night podcast by the fire, as we labor under a winter storm watch in the upper midwest (at least a foot of snow ‘predicted’ with the ‘storm’ starting Monday night), time to air some concerns about what we are being told, and talk about the antidote to it. Sponsored by Hydrus Performance, and by the Mobile Podcast Command Unit of The Bob Davis Podcasts.

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